Manteca Police: Charges still pending in late-night shooting

Manteca Police still don’t quite know what happened Thursday night in an apparent shooting at a home on El Dorado Street that left a mother of three with serious injuries.

But a man that lives at the residence – 37-year-old Zachary Aaron Due – has since been arrested and charged with negligent discharge of a firearm and child endangerment after officers and EMS personnel responded to the home not long after 10:30 p.m. Thursday.

According to Manteca Police Department Lt. Tony Souza, the woman was transported via ambulance to nearby Sequoia Elementary School where an air ambulance out of Stockton was brought in to transport her to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.

Souza described her injury as “non-life threatening” and said that detectives were planning on making the trip to the hospital on Friday to interview the woman and get a better understanding of what exactly transpired.

All three children – ranging from ages one to 11 – were unharmed in the incident.

The unidentified woman – believed to be 30-years-old – was transported out of Manteca just before 1 a.m. Friday.

“Right now our officers are investigating further to try and determined what really happened – we don’t quite know outside of what happened after the fact,” Souza said. “Depending on the outcome of that investigation, additional charges could be pending.”

Manteca Fire Department and Manteca District Ambulance crews aided medics from Stockton’s REACH 2 helicopter when it landed in a field in the southwest corner of Sequoia’s campus shortly before midnight Thursday.

The woman was stabilized and brought out to the helicopter before being wheeled back onto the pavement where crews had additional light to make preparations for the flight to the Sacramento County trauma center.

The incident on El Dorado, however, wasn’t the only one involving a gun that transpired after the sun set Thursday night.

After reports of gunshots near the intersection of Davis Street and Walnut Avenue, Manteca Police officers responded to find a group walking away from the scene and witnessed somebody toss a handgun into a nearby bush.

Souza said that details from that incident were sketchy, but the gun was retrieved and efforts are underway to determine the owner and any possible DNA evidence linking it to the person that may have pulled the trigger.